The Hidden River Beneath University Street
When Seattle’s early engineers paved over a local creek, nature fought back during the autumn rains.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Washed Away: The recent rains made a fearful excavation at the foot of University Street. Before the grade was commenced along Front, the foot of University Street was used as a receptacle for brush, pruned from the orchards and shade trees in the vicinity. This covered over the bed of the sewer completely, and the graders began to pile in dirt over it, after burning off a portion, without discovering the creek, and probably ignorant of the fact that there was one there. But during the recent rains, the torrents of water that came pouring down the street burst through the bank of earth that had been thrown over its passage and carried everything before it.
“The torrents of water that came pouring down the street burst through the bank of earth that had been thrown over its passage and carried everything before it.”
This 1876 account of a buried creek reclaimed by heavy rain highlights the recurring struggle of Seattle's geography. Like many modern instances of 'urban flooding' where forgotten or culverted streams re-assert themselves under pavement, the story reminds us that Seattle was built by filling in and altering complex water systems that rarely stay hidden forever.
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